RIP, Justin Haynes: Ottawa-raised musician dies at 46

Justin Haynes, a Toronto-based, Ottawa-raised guitarist and pianist whose talents, creativity and prolific output staggered his peers for more than two decades, died this week.

He was 46, and his pursuit of his artistry came with personal struggles. In January, Haynes was homeless for several days and he wrote harrowingly on his website and in Now Toronto of his stay at Seaton House, Canada’s largest homeless shelter.

Haynes’s photos and exposé prompted Toronto’s director of homeless initiatives and prevention services to acknowledge that Seaton House was an “inadequate facility.”

In his teens and early 20s, before he moved to Toronto, Haynes played with a wide spectrum of Ottawa musicians, including the legendary septuagenarian saxophonist Vernon Isaacs, guitar mentor Roddy Ellias, vocalist Rebecca Campbell, bassist John Geggie, singer-songwriter Jim Bryson and his young and musically unfettered peers Nick Fraser and Jordan O’Connor, who like him would move to Toronto.

“All I’ll say is that he was my best friend, a true inspiration to me and probably the purest musician I’ve known,” Fraser said in an email this week, after posting a photo of Haynes, without a caption, on Facebook.

On guitar and piano, Haynes made brave, uncompromising music that could be challenging and abstract or heartbreakingly lyrical and vulnerable. Some of his most frequent collaborators were drummer Jean Martin, trumpeter Kevin Turcotte, and the vocalists Tena Palmer and, more recently, Felicity Williams.

Vocalist Felicity Williams and guitarist Justin Haynes

By the time he was in his early teens, Haynes was on his musical path. Then, he went to Earl of March High School in Kanata and took lessons with Ellias, who wrote on Facebook: “Justin would have been a genius musician no matter who taught him… I can safely say I have never met or taught anyone with more talent, humility, creativity, intelligence, love of life and curiosity about just about everything.

“Family, friends, students, the Canadian music community have all suffered an enormous loss,” Ellias wrote.

Haynes, who grew up in Dunrobin, studied classical guitar at 12 only to become captivated by the music of jazz guitar legend Joe Pass.

Still in high school, Haynes and O’Connor had a weekly gig at Cafe Wim on Sussex Drive. “The owner advised us how to play standards, which we did through one amp that we stole from Canterbury High School, which we drifted in and out of,” Haynes told the Citizen in an interview a few years ago.

“We met Nick a little later, who started playing with us at Sammy’s Cellar (on Sparks Street) and wherever else would have us,” Haynes continued. “We started playing original music, rearranging standards and doing what we believed to be more “outside” stuff. We were also incredibly fortunate to have opportunities to play with more seasoned musicians like Hugh O’Connor, Vernon, Jamie Gatti, Kirk MacDonald and others who kicked our asses.”

Haynes told the Citizen in a 1993 story: “”It was strange. You’re hanging out with people who are a lot older and we’d sit around until the wee hours of the morning talking. These were guys that had great stories to tell. And the next day, you’re with people your own age and you’re supposed to relate but you can’t.”

Haynes spoke then of wanting to move to Vancouver and study music therapy. He had already volunteered as a music teacher to a group of autistic children, and been enriched by the experience. “I really got something out of that. (Music) certainly gave them some pleasure or solace,” Haynes said.

In the mid-1990s, Haynes lived in a Centretown apartment where the dining room was a musician’s den. Haynes said then: ”I’ve got just enough work here to make a living. I have thought about going to Toronto or New York or London but there are some great musicians here to work with, for one thing. And if I were to move to a bigger city, I wouldn’t necessarily be doing my own stuff.”

GUITARIST JUSTIN HAYNES, with John Geggie, and singer Rebecca Campbell in 1996

Haynes also continued to study music, taking lessons with the American jazz greats Gary Peacock in New York and Ralph Towner in Seattle.

“They are both lovely guys and geniuses in their own ways,” Haynes said years later. “Ralph and I played together a little and talked a lot about writing tunes and working as musicians. ‘We both have the same problems,’ he would say. Gary, like Roddy, is a very gifted and inspired pedagogue. It’s really a part of his practice as a musician to teach. He gave me a lifetime of work in about an hour. One thing that Gary stressed was the value in ‘living a life in service’ – a phrase I say to myself almost every day. I don’t claim to always live one, but it is my goal to do so.”

Around 1997, Haynes moved to Toronto. “I didn’t really have a choice but to leave Ottawa,” he said, years later. “My friends (Nick, Jordan, Rebecca and Jean Martin) had moved to Toronto already, and I wasn’t doing much in Ottawa except for teaching guitar, practicing and smoking cigarettes. When I got to Toronto I almost immediately got busy playing, recording and touring.

“I started composing for groups and theatre as well as some short films. Just the sheer volume of musicians and artists in Toronto or any big city makes doing this sort of thing more viable — if not always financially, at least in terms of community. I found a community in Toronto, which beyond any career highlight has been the most significant thing about being there.”

In 2012, Haynes was the artist-in-residence at the National Music Centre in Calgary.

This video also dates to 2012:

On YouTube, beneath the video, it reads:

“”First of all I am 39 years old, a single dad and a musician living in Toronto so much if not everything I do is guided by limited means: I rent a small apartment. I ride a bike. My kid has a PC. I use the Gladstone Public Library as an office. I have a Public Mobile cell phone. I shop at the Salvation Army. I wash my clothes in the bathtub. I use Blogger as a web provider. My psychiatrist is covered by OHIP. I have a jazz trio that tours with a $30 ukulele, a suitcase drum, and a street-sweeper bristle bass. I’m working on a audio/video songwriting project called biodad that features friends of mine who are willing to come by and let me record them doing weird stuff for no money. I have many recipes that include Ramen noodles. I have three guitars, an omnichord and a synthesizer, which were all given to me as gifts. My piano (also a gift) lives at my friend’s place because mine is too small. You get the idea.” – JH

According to a CBC report, Haynes was separated from his son’s mother and struggling to find affordable housing in downtown Toronto when he moved in January into Seaton House for several days. “It’s the most hopeless, dismal and filthy place I’ve ever seen,” Haynes wrote. “It’s how I imagine prison, only with more booze and drugs.”

Subsequently, Haynes became an advocate for affordable housing in Toronto. In another Now Toronto article published this month, Haynes wrote that because of his disability, he received $1,150 from the Ontario Disability Support Program, intended to cover housing, food, clothing, and a transit pass. But that money fell short of his $1,200 rent, which paid for “a basement shoebox,” where he slept “on a yoga mat on the floor in the living room/kitchen,” and which needed improvements so that his son could stay with him.

Haynes was found dead in his apartment several days ago, friends say. The cause of his death has not been confirmed.